


I'm cursed to live forever (but I can enjoy tonight)

by ryolan



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore
Genre: Apollo is a human disaster, Attempt at Humor, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I learned today that I can't write humor to save my life, M/M, One Shot, Pythia is so done
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:54:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22318951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryolan/pseuds/ryolan
Summary: They call her Pythia, after the rotting serpent her temple is built on.
Relationships: Apollo & Pythia | Oracle of Delphi (Ancient Greek Religion and Lore), Apollo/Hyacinthus (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 43





	I'm cursed to live forever (but I can enjoy tonight)

**Author's Note:**

> I was going to write angst about how Pythia is sad that her less happy prophecies always come true, but then I blinked and this happened. An improvement? I don't know.
> 
> Also, why is there no relationship tag for Apollo & Pythia/Oracle of Delphi? They would totally be friends; she would be like 50% of his impulse control. Artemis is the other 50%.

They call her Pythia, after the rotting serpent her temple is built on. They covet her visions, and people die and kill and travel to the ends of the earth and beyond to escape or fulfill what she has said.

She is old; she is ageless. She has witnessed generations upon generations of folly and success. She has foretold countless tales of happiness and even more of despair. She has never been wrong, not even once, not even back when she could still count her age and had a power she didn’t know how to use. Her prophecies are always fulfilled because she is treasured by Apollo, who will never guide her astray, and over time, she finds that there is a certain headiness in seeing the strings of fate with crystal-clear clarity.

The other priests regard her as something otherworldly and whisper among themselves, prideful of her abilities, jealous that they themselves do not possess them. She knows that she is blessed, that her visions are prized and sought after throughout the world. She is, perhaps, the single most influential human woman alive, the most influential human, even. Everything leads back to what she sees, and she sees _everything._

Truly, she is lucky to be who she is.

If only her job weren’t so damn difficult sometimes.

~*~

“Pythia!”

She turns the page of the newspaper in her hands—looks like Perseus, killer of Medusa, is now also Perseus, accidental killer of Acrisius—and sighs, hoping that whoever’s calling her will go away. 

The shout of “Pythia! I need your help!” comes again, and she resigns herself to playing counselor to whichever priest wants her advice—it’s her day off, and only her subordinates would be stupid enough to approach her right now, probably because constantly breathing in gases from a decaying serpent made them lose all their survival instincts.

She gets off her tripod, neatly folds her newspaper, then calls out, “I’m in the prophecy room.” There’s a moment of silence in which she thinks that whoever’s searching for her didn’t hear—and damn it, she really can’t wait until cell phones are invented; the acoustics of the temple are _terrible_ —but then someone who is decidedly _not_ a priest comes through the doorway.

She squints against the blinding light that her boss, Apollo, radiates, temporarily losing her sight to brilliant white, and pulls out a pair of sunglasses, setting them on her face. Her sight returns in time to catch Apollo frowning at her folded newspaper and sunglasses.“Pythia,” he reprimands, “you know you’re not supposed to have items from the future. What if someone sees them?”

She’s about to retort, but he cuts in. “Whatever, it doesn’t matter, just don’t do it again.” He looks at her beseechingly. “Pythia, I need your help. There’s a guy.”

Oh no.

Two hours, three passionate rants, and five bouts of uncontrollable tears later, she’s sitting on her tripod with Apollo’s head on her lap and his tears soaking the text of the newspaper. Darn. She was really hoping to finish that article about the battle between the Amazons and the up-and-coming hero Bellerophon.

Apollo hiccups, then says, “I just don’t know if I should approach him, you know? People usually run away from me when I try to woo them, but I really, really, like this guy, and I don’t want him to run away! I don’t want him to turn into a plant; three times was enough!”

“This is rather unprofessional,” she says, stroking his hair. “I don’t think you should be coming to me for advice about your love life.”

“Where else do I go? Artemis doesn’t care, Hermes laughed at me, and Father would probably tell me to turn into an eagle and kidnap him.”

“Your family is emotionally constipated,” she states. “Ask him out. I’m sure it will be fine.”

“You really think so?”

“No. Your track record doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.” She shakes her head when he looks at her balefully. “And before you ask, I can’t look into your future—it was in my contract, remember?”

Apollo groans and drags himself off the floor. “You’re no help either. I’ll go and- play my lyre or something. The muses are holding a concert in a few weeks. Maybe I can help.” He vanishes in a flash of light that leaves her blinking spots out of her eyes, even with the sunglasses on. 

She tries to unfold the tear-soaked newspaper with limited success, gives up, and drops it in one of the public-use trash cans outside. “I think I’ll go spend the rest of the day with the rotting corpse downstairs,” she says aloud. “I could really do with the fumes.”

Why did she become a priestess again?

~*~

Over the course of the next month, she is visited by five separate gods. This would be worrying in itself—the Oracle of Delphi is indisputably Apollo’s domain, and the gods try not to talk to her too much or he gets jealous—but the messages they arrive with make it _worse_.

“He doesn’t come to music nights anymore!” Hermes says, gripping her knees. “I don’t have anyone to tell me that I should be playing A flat, not G sharp—Athena just says I’m doing it correctly, and it creeps me out!”

“He’s _pining_.” Artemis rubs her arms and shudders. “I can hear him singing emo love ballads in his room all day. It gives me _hives_.”

“He never go-he never goes to our- our post-music night bar crawls anymore,” Dionysus slurs. “Herms’n I are getting- we’re getting _bored_.”

“Helios had to come out of retirement,” Athena says, matter-of-fact. “The overall levels of idiocy on Olympus are currently decreasing, but with Hermes and Dionysus’s increasing restlessness, I fear they may spike.”

“I was going to wait for my son to approach the boy himself, or perhaps kidnap him,” Zeus booms, knocking the door off its hinges with the force of his arrival. “Why do you have a door from the futu- whatever. Tell him to man up!”

She doesn’t need to ask who “he” is; she already knows. Gods, Apollo is so high-maintenance, especially when he’s being mopey, and apparently the Olympians think she's his caretaker now. 

“Why do I still keep him around?” she wonders.

“He gives you your paycheck,” says one of the newer priests who hasn’t learned to fear her yet.

“Ah, right,” she says. “I tolerate him for the money. I should get a raise when this is all over.” She pinches the base of her nose then says, “Okay, everyone out of the room. You,” she points to the newbie priest, “put up the ‘closed’ sign. I’m summoning him.”

They obey, and she watches with satisfaction as the newbie frantically asks where they keep the ‘closed’ sign. There is no ‘closed’ sign, but she derives what’s probably an unhealthy amount of pleasure in making new recruits squirm.

She makes sure all the priests are out of sight before donning her sunglasses and hollering “APOLLO! Get down here!” at the top of her lungs. Moments later, the god of music, prophecy, and light (damn it, why did it have to be light) appears in the room with a flash bright enough to make her vision go momentarily grey.

“Hey, Pythia,” he says, then breaks into sobs. She politely waits until he finishes before speaking.

“All right,” she says, and he looks up. “Everyone’s been telling me that you’re being a hopeless mess, so here’s what’s going to happen. You and I are going to go to Sparta, and you’re going to talk to the boy you’re pining after-“

“I’m not pining!” Apollo protests.

She levels a judgmental look at him. “You really are, which is why we’re going to do this. After you’ve talked to him, you can ask him out, grant him immortality or something if he wants it, and give me a raise because I don’t make enough money to deal with this.” She crosses her arms. “Got it?”

Apollo nods, looking happier and not at all distressed at having to increase her salary, though it probably just hasn’t sunk in yet. “Got it.”

“Great,” she says. “Summon your sun chariot or something. I can’t walk all the way to Sparta.”

~*~

“Did it hurt when you fell out of heaven?”

“...What’s heaven?”

She facepalms. And everyone tells her she shouldn’t be using things from the future; at least she doesn’t reference a religion that doesn’t even _exist_ yet in a bad pickup line. Though she is starting to regret leaving the sunglasses behind at the temple—she can barely see Apollo’s panicked glance at her and his mouthed _What do I do?_

The young prince of Sparta that Apollo is trying to seduce is faring no better; he squints at Apollo and asks “It might just be all the light, but are you talking to that bush over there?”

She facepalms again, then keeps her head in her hand in a futile effort to save her retinas. Why Apollo made her hide in a bush, she has no idea, but she wouldn’t be surprised if this was all an elaborate plan to make her suffer as much as possible. That's a plausible explanation for why she seems to be acting out the plot of one of those cheap romance books from the future, except it's a thousand times worse because Apollo is a _god_ and he should not be having this much trouble flirting with a mortal.

She drags her head out of her hand, and, fighting against the wave of pain hitting her eyes, mouths back _Ask him about his_ _interests_.

“So… do you like guys?”

She smacks her hand into her forehead so hard that it smarts, about to get up and drag her idiot away before he can embarrass himself more, but to her surprise, the prince says, “Yeah.”

She peers up again. Apollo looks shell-shocked at getting this far, and the prince is smiling at him.

“Do you maybe want to… I don’t know, hunt mountain lions with me sometime?” Apollo asks, and she can’t help but feel proud of him right now—he only looked towards her for encouragement once in the entire sentence, and it was almost subtle.

The prince beams, and she has to screw her eyes shut against the light that has somehow increased tenfold. “Sure!” he says, and she hears a low thud; when she opens her eyes, she finds that he has his arms wrapped around Apollo, who is glowing even brighter from all the ichor rushing to his face.

The prince tilts his head up to look at Apollo, blinding grin still in place. “My name is Hyacinth, by the way.”

Apollo grins back, and really, their combined brilliance is honestly too much; she _really_ regrets leaving the sunglasses behind. She shields her eyes with her arm just as she hears him reply with, “My name is Apollo.”

“Yeah, I figured,” Hyacinth says. “What with the light and all.”

She can feel Apollo’s embarrassment. To save him from humiliating himself in front of his newfound date, she steps out of the bushes, still covering her eyes, and says, “Good job, Apollo.” She throws a thumbs-up in what she hopes is his direction. “Have fun with your boyfriend; I’m going to go back to the temple now.”

Apollo squawks, apparently having forgotten she was there, but Hyacinth just waves at her. “Bye, Pythia,” he says. “I’ll take care of him.”

She grins in approval. “I’m sure you will.” Then she turns to Apollo. “Remember my pay raise.”

Apollo groans; Hyacinth laughs. She pulls out her phone and calls an Uber, because now she can afford to. 

“What in the name of Zeus Almighty is that,” she hears Hyacinth say against the backdrop of Apollo's frantic yelling as she steps into the car and closes the door.

“Where to, miss?” the driver asks.

“The Temple of Apollo in Delphi.” She leans back into her seat and pulls out today’s newspaper, ignoring what sounds like Apollo trying to project thoughts of walking home into her mind, which, _no_. She deserves a reward for her suffering.

 _Cadmus In Servitude to Ares for Slaying Dragon_ , the headline reads, and she engrosses herself in its pages.

Sometimes she really loves her job.

**Author's Note:**

> I mean... I tried?
> 
> As always, constructive criticism is welcome.


End file.
